I think it's pretty silly for Congress to hold hearings looking into the decadence of hip-hop lyrics. Hip-hop is often filthy and degrading, but what can Congress do about it? Nada. Still, yesterday's Capitol Hill event did produce several interesting nuggets.
"Hip-hop is sick because America is sick." -- so said Lavell Crump, a rap producer, saying that it's society's fault that his musical genre revels in valorizing violence, misogyny, profanity, predatory sex, drug use and materialism. I can't believe people like him can say this with a straight face. As if art hasn't a long history of trying to wring meaning and redemption out of suffering, instead of exploiting and promoting it.
Record company executives also rationalized their role, saying don't blame them, they're just giving the people what they want:
"We have a responsibility to speak authentically to our viewers," said Philippe Dauman, president & CEO of Viacom Inc., which owns such cable networks as MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and BET.
Presumably if "viewers" want to see live executions and child porn one of these days, Dauman has no choice but to respond "authentically."
It fell to Percy Miller, who performs under the name Master P, to cut through the bullcaca:
Miller comes from a different perspective, having sworn off the use of offensive words and other depictions because he says they do little to further society. He told the panel that he had an epiphany when he turned down his own music when his kids were in the car so they couldn't hear the words."This whole thing is about growing up," he told lawmakers.
They might talk about art and how they reflect the pent-up rage in the black community, but "most guys are in it for the money," Miller said.
It's all about making money. I blogged earlier this year about a conversation I'd had with a friend whose husband just finished his first year teaching in public middle school. It was a tough year, and he concluded that the biggest obstacle he faced in educating his students was that the values of hip-hop had been internalized by these kids, and were being lived out.
But for the black guys who come up with this garbage, and the white guys who sell it, see, it's all about the money. No moral responsibility to anything or anybody else, besides their own personal or corporate bottom line. Good on Master P for growing up.
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It's sad that the most prevalent representation of hip hop music is the most negative, nasty, exploitive styles. It's sad that some people take the negativity of rap and use that as a guideline on what black culture is and how young black people should act. Hip Hop is just as revolutionary and important to american music history as jazz and blues and it is sad that greedy people who had little respect for the fact that black music forms are a part of black culture took the most negative and pushed it on the american public. Hip hop originated in the late seventies when black people where creating uplifting and protest soul music and rap had the same types of messages. It continued on this path until the late eighties when gangsta rap and dirty south styles gained regional popularity and they soon became the main styles that were represented in mainstrem music. There is nothing wrong with speaking up about growing up in and surviving poverty and violence, but it was glorified and to be "real" as a young black male in these areas you have to emulate the lifestyles that are pushed in mainstream rap. I challenge people to google Hip hop and try new flavors such as Common, mos def, even outkast. You will be pleasantly surprised
Many of the bands and artists I loved as a teen (30 years ago... sigh) were just as objectionable as the rappers cited here. The differences is, back in the Seventies, even the shock-rockers did things with a wink and a nudge.
Alice Cooper did guest appearances on "The Muppet Show" and "Hollywood Squares." He enjoyed poking fun at his own evil image, and letting people know it was all a put-on.
When AC/DC's Bon Scott sang about murder in "Night Prowler," he closed with a Robin Williams-style "Shazbat, Nanu nanu!" He had to send a signal that "This is all a goof, kids- we're not REALLY homicidal maniacs!"
Today, that kind of thing wouldn't fly. Rappers and rockers today are under a lot of pressure to "keep it real" and actually live the thug lifestyle they sing about. Robbie "Vanilla Ice" Van Winkle's career was over the moment kids found out he was a middle class kid from Dallas and NOT a genuine street hoodlum.
My guess is, a lot of current rappers, as well as guys like Marilyn Manson (who seems like a pretty bright guy off stage) would tell you (off the record), "Look man, I know a lot of this is B.S. and some of it seems evil, but you have to understand, white boys from the suburbs eat this stuff up, and they'll dump me in a second if I let on that I'm not really the psychopath I play on stage."
The bigger issue is the knuckleheads in Congress who waste their time on this stuff. Those clowns are in session less than half the year now. And they come in on Tuesday and leave on Thursday. Yet given that:
The Tax Code stinks
Entitlements are a mess
There's no energy policy that makes sense
New Orleans is still decrepit
Our whole foreign policy is in the tank
Blah, blah, blah...
And yet those guys hold hearings on:
Hip-hop
Steroids in Baseball
Dogfighting!?!?
Retired NFL player benefits!?!?!?
Blah, blah, Triple blah
They make me sick.
I agree with Rod---one cannot just say that, "well, people want this, so how can we not sell it?" If this were true, there should be no logical reason for drugs, prostitution, child porn, or heck, slavery to be perfectly legal. So I'm not trying to argue that these people are greedy and irresponsible.
But they have a point. People want it; if they didn't, these CDs wouldn't sell. And the people who find lyrics about date rape amusing are sick. The problem, of course, is that this is just feeding it in an endless loop---people are sick, this makes rap sick, which makes people sicker, and so on. But as Rod said, Congress can do little about it, so really, the depressing fact is that unless people get as smart as Master P, this will continue.
God bless.
I'm with hermitian.
By the way, what this points to is the overwhelming need to return our federal government to its Constitutional boundaries.
There's only one candidate on either side who proposes to do this, of course.
Ron Paul
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